Calorimetry is a technique by which the amount of heat required or produced during a chemical reaction or physical process can be measured. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is a thermoanalytic technique in which the difference in the amount of heat required to increase the temperature of a sample and a reference are measured as a function of temperature. The sample and the reference are maintained at substantially the same temperature throughout the experiment. Typical applications of DSC are in the study of phase transitions such as melting, glass transitions, and exothermic reactions. These transitions involve energy changes or heat capacity changes that can be detected by DSC with good sensitivity.